OT: What are your investing thoughts going forward?
Papi_Chulo
Miami, FL (or the nearest big-booty club)
Friday, February 5, 2021 3:26 PM
There are some/many(?) that are predicting a serious cratering of our economy/stock-market at some point (perhaps in the too not distant future) – of course no one can say for sure if this *will* happen, or when it will happen, or how bad it will be.
Midway thru 2019 I had started to decrease my SCing to about 25% of what I used to SC (due to burnout - and 0% SCing since March of 2020 due to Covid) – this freed-up a decent chunk of cash which I put into the stock-market (midway thru 2019 I also moved into the market a decent amount of cash I’d had sitting in a separate internet-bank-account) – all this allowed me to catch up on my retirement investing (over the last few years I had put *some* $$$ towards my retirement but not as much as I needed/wanted to) – my nest-egg catch-up allowed me to “get back on track” to where I have a much better chance to get to what I need to get to for a comfortable (not fancy) retirement assuming the market on avg does “ok” (not necessarily great) until then.
Now that I’ve gotten on track w.r.t. my investments, and w/ the economy seeming so shaky (per my uneducated lens), I’m concerned all this “work”/catching-up will be swiftly undone in a swift market crash – of course no one has a crystal-ball to say if, when, or how bad, it will happen.
I keep vacillating as to whether I should do something, or just ride it out – i.e.:
1) part of me feels like getting out of the market and into cash (or something similar non-risky even if it’s a minor return) as to not lose my recent gains
2) part of me feels I should adjust my investment strategy instead – I’m currently into a low-cost S&P index fund (Voo) – right around the time of the pandemic I had moved out of my index-fund and went into the blue-chips (Amazon; Microsoft; Facebook; Google – investing the heaviest in Amazon the lightest in Google) – this served me well – but I recently got out of these stocks and into the Voo ETF b/c I was pissed at big-tech and didn’t wanna be involved w/ them (not saying this is a “smart investing move” and I know I’m still “invested” in them via my ETF) – anyway I had moved into the blue-chips around last March b/c I felt they would weather the turbulent pandemic better – now I’m wondering if we *are* indeed headed for turbulent times if the blue-chips will fare better than the overall-market and if I should move back into them
3) my last vacillating thought is just stay in the market w/ my low-cost diversified Voo ETF and continue to mostly do dollar-cost-averaging since I don’t know what will happen or when, and basically ride it out (I'm by no means a "sophisticated"/deeply-knowledgeable investor) – being 51 ys/o I have at least 11 years till my earliest retirement age (I know I’d be taking a SS haircut retiring at this age but is something I’d consider for various reasons) – and I have 16 years till my full-retirement age – given these time-frames I “assume” I’d have time to recover if there is a nasty market-downturn in the near-future
Part of me feels like getting out now and sitting it out till things seem more stable so as to protect my current balance – and part of me is feeling FOMO (fear of missing out) and feeling I may be making a mistake sitting out (part of me is thinking/assuming that perhaps the economy/market may have a bit of a run at least for a period of time, as we completely come out of the lockdown and pent-up-demand kicks-in and perhaps we get back to near full employment).
What are the thoughts of the TUSCL illuminati think w.r.t . the economy/market going-forward:
a) are you staying w/ your current/past strategies?
b) are you thinking about changing things up and if so how?
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